The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-02-02
Grasses.

We take the following abstract of
Mr.. A. w. Cheever's talk on Grasses"
before the Vermont Dairymen's Asso-
citation from the Mirror and Farmer:
Now the creamery butter of the West
is bringing the highest quoted prices,
and has made sorry inroads into the
fancy butter trade of our eastern cities.
The amount of dollar-a-pound butter
sold in our cities has never equaled
drop in the bucket, compared to the
amount sold at regular quotations.
There are few farmers who obtain
prices considerably above the highest
quotations, ranging from sixty to
seventy cents per pound, but not one
could double his supply without break
ing his market. And now the ques-
ton arises, What are you going to do
about it?' Cheaper the cost of pro-
duction by adopting a better system of
farming. Economy in production must
be observed in all departments. Grow
fewer weeds, fewer bushes and more
grass. We must not pay interest and
taxes on so much unproductive farm
land. No farmer should feel satisfied
with less than two tons of hay per acre
per year, nor with good pasture that
in good season will not produce feed
enough to summer a COW per acre,
with the addition of little grain once
or twice day. The farms of Vermont
average about one hundred acres of
improved land each and keep an equiva-
lent of twelve cows per farm, which
consume twenty-five tons of hay per
year, thus requiring eight acres to sup
port each COW. The income of the
average Vermont farm is $6.2S per
acre. You can produce as much hay
in your moving fields, and as much
feed in your pastures, as can be pro-
duced in any state in the Union, and
when you will make all your good
land produce as we'll as the land of your
best farmers you will be prepared to
compete with any section and ask favors
of none. Better farming is what the
times call for. | believe the farmers
of New England would find it to their
advantage to make the acquaintance of
a number of other grasses, instead of
adhering so closely to timothy. Raise
less hay to sell and more to feed to your
own animals. Redtop should be grown
more extensively. On moist, rich land
it will make as heavy a crop as
timothy, while on dry land it will eX-
coed it. It's richer hay than tim
othy 1t seldom makes rowen cror
that is worth cutting. Whitetop is one
of the least valuable of our June
grasses. Spear-grass is a valuable grass
to SOW with orchard grass, to thicker
the sod and fill up all spaces that would
otherwise remain vacant Orchard
grass is just as easy to kill by cultiva
ton as field of timothy or clover
The same is true of red clover. TC
grow orchard-grass at its best select {
moist, but not wet, field; let it be made
clean of weeds and weed-seeds by {
year of thorough culture of some hoeC
crop; SOW the last of July or the first o
August. Put on two bushels of seeC
and bushel of Kentucky bluegrass
with few pounds of clover.
densely shaded crop, heavily MANFRED
will weaken witch-grass very much, i
it does not clean it out. Corn, cab
bage and Hungarian millet are goo'
crops with which to suffocate it. Pow
ing deeply in midsummer, being care
full to put the sod all at the bottom o
the burrows, and then narrowing tn
surface every few days with harrow
that will cut off every living leaf, vii